A lot of my all-time favorites had to grow on me slowly. Conversely, many of the albums that "blew me away" on first listen couldn't stand up to repeated listens.

A few of the ones that grabbed me by the short hairs and wouldn't let go include:

Genesis - Trick of the Tail
I was 13 years old. Just starting to learn that there was more to music than just AM radio. Then I heard this (and Aqualung, Brain Salad Surgery, and Fragile) and my life, as I know it, began.

U2 - War
I was a marginal fan of their first 2 albums already. But then the college radio station (WUOG, The Last One Left) played this one at midnight on its release date, while I was in my dorm room studying. All I remember is telling my roommate to shut the F up...this was something important going on.

REM - Life's Rich Pageant
The only REM album that I immediately loved on first listen. The rest of them had to grow on me.

Radiohead - Kid A
Built to Spill - Ancient Melodies of the Future
I went a long time between epiphanies. A long time. Then, I had two at the same time. At a listening station in a Border's book store. Life's funny like that.

The Beatles - Sgt. Peppers - I can't say a lot that hasn't been said to death, but its everything anyone has ever said about it. It defined the album as an artistic statement, and not just a collection of songs.

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon: One of rock's greatest statements, ranking with the likes of Sgt Peppers. A lot of people feel this way about this album, and I'm no different. Still a classic. Still always a generation in waiting to be blown away by it.

Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy: their best, most cohesive effort. Not that they slacked off too bad afterwards, but its just a sublime masterpiece. I still make time to listen to it in its entirety. I know Stairway To heaven is this band's signature song, but Over The Hills And Far Away and The Rain Song remain my favorite LZ tunes. And songs like D'yer Maker, The Crunge and Dancing Days showed they were willing to flirt with other styles and to good affect. They were music afficienados and they weren't content with making the same album twice, although for my money, they could rested on their laurels with this one.

Robert Plant - The Principle Of Moments: I knew who Robert Plant was, but this offbeat solo album was only remotely related to his stint in LZ. He was dedicated to making his own mark and he did so with this album. One of the few albums from this time period that transcends the era. His next two albums seemed stuck in the glitz of the '80s, but this one is always a great listen. I literally wore out two cassettes of this album.

Rush - Moving Pictures: Many people still consider them a metal band, but this album transcends the genre for me. Everything about this album sounded so futuristic to me. I'm still amazed by this album's ability to sound so relevent and modern today. At one point, I listened to it on a daily basis. Engaged me from the first listen

Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair: my first foray (unknowingly) into the world of art rock. It still is, once of the best sounding albums by anyone. It was a big, lush sound, and the lyrics and music came across as sounding so profound to me in my early years.

Prince - Around The World In A Day: I couldn't get enough of this when it came out; Prince at his story telling best...his peak really. Some gripe about the production (I've griped about the mixing), but these were minor complaints. His best work is here, whether its the sublime pop of Raspberry Beret or Pop Life, the sparce funk of Tamborine, the slow burn soul of The Ladder, the channeling of Hendrix on America, or the paen to funkedelia of the title track or Paisley Park.

XTC - Skylarking: I wasn't really thrilled with this when I first bought it (my first XTC album), having seen the video for Dear God on the MTV, but when I decided to commit to it as an entire, singular piece of work, I was hooked, and still am. The first four tracks on the album are the finest moments of their career and the entire album is one of pop's finest. Todd Rungren's production on this album would influence the band from this album on, though they never achieved this level of magic again.

I spent the first chunk of my life listening to modern and 90s punk, borrowing music from friends, ripping it onto my pc and putting it on my minidisc player or ipod ~(depending on how old I was) moved through alot of bands liking it but not really being inspired by anything. less then a year ago, my pc fried, and I lost all of the music I had, apart from 20 odd cds. So I went shopping, starting afresh. I spent about £100 in various stores, mainly on modern stuff, but I also picked up ac/dc high oltage, and judas priests british steel. That completely changed my perspective on music, and now Im more focused and classic rock and metal rather then the current crud.

I then got into a current progressive metal band "tool" and really liked them for their wierdness and depth, but on friday I picked up a second hand copy of the wall, and that blew that out of the water.

Oh, and probably battle for los angeles by rage against the machine, i love that album.

What album or albums hit you so hard, from left field even, that musically, you were never ever the same again? This may have happened more than once in your life, if you like music as much as I do, I'm sure it has.... What rocked your world?

Gee, some would go back so far I'm not sure I would remember.

When I was very young, pre-school, we used to play a shortened version of Ravel's Bolero over and over and over again. Must have driven my mother to distraction. Other recordings I remember from my early childhood are Franck's Symphony in d and Brahms Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3, and Tchaikovsky's 6th (Pathetique), Mom's favorites. I also liked Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 and Deems Taylor's Through the Looking Glass. I remember Dad used to play music after we went to bed and I particularly liked von Suppe's Poet and Peasant Overture. So I started off liking classical music early.

We also liked Spike Jones and Victor Borge, and I suppose I learned from them that classical music can be fun.

Early on, I liked a number of opera singers such as the great bass, Ezio Pinza, and the great tenor, Beniamino Gigli. We were playing Gigli's recordings of three arias from Verdi's La Traviata and my older brother remarked, "It's almost as if he sings instead of talks," since Gigli made it sound so easy and natural--though I know he actually worked very hard. And there were the Metropolitian Opera broadcasts on Saturdays.

Anyway, I've always liked singing and have been in numerous choirs and chorus in my life. I'm a pretty good baritone and besides chorus parts, I can sing most things robust baritones can sing whether classical songs, oratorio arias, operatic arias, show tunes, and so on. I'm pretty good, not world class, but pretty good.

From there, I have just moved on to more music. Symphonies by Beethoven and others, chamber music, jazz (my father had some jazz recordings), piano (my mother played piano pretty well), folk music, some world music, and so on.

I don't believe in musical epiphanies, but there are certain albums that have stuck themselves in my brain, and which I keep going back to:-

The BeatlesSgt Pepper - of course, nuff saidPink FloydMeddle - Everybody talks about Dark Side Of The Moon, and yes it is a classic, but Meddle is the Floyd album that I keep coming back to.Led ZeppelinLed Zeppelin II - All the earlier Zep albums are good, but this one rocks like no other. Jimmy Page's guitar has a rich, powerful sound on this album that just doesn't come through the same way on any of their other recordings.The WhoWho's Next - The Who at their finest. Whenever I get bored with the stodgy, plodding, sampled sounds of modern music (which is quite often), I put this album on, cue Baba O'Riley and crank up the volume. Nothing can beat this!Yes The Yes Album and Fragile - I used to be a huge Yes fan in my teenage years. These are their two best albums, in my opinion, but I rapidly became bored with them soon after this. These two stand out, though.

I think that Porcupine Tree and Spock's Beard were musical epiphanies for me in that they made me realize that good, new prog existed. I thought that if I wanted to hear prog, I had to go back to the 70's. But then I discovered a whole new movement in current day progressive rock whose discovery I have immensely enjoyed..

Criminey!!!

Holy Rip Van Winkle Batman. Who found this ole nugget? Dayum 3LB. When I first saw this thread I'd "forgotten" I started it in the first place lo these many years ago... Talkin' about back from the grave. Interesting read though...

- Crime of the Century, by SUPERTRAMP - I was never the same after listening to this album. It opened my mind to everything else I started discovering in the prog world since then.

- Mirage, by CAMEL - blew my mind in a way I became a huge fan of the band at the same instant. One of my all time favorites.

- October Project, by OCTOBER PROJECT - Wowwww!!! Can't forget the first time I listened to this wonderful album. Pure passion at first listening!!!

- The Sky Moves Sideways, by PORCUPINE TREE - Needless to say how much I enjoy this band nowadays, and everything started with that wonderful album.

- Deserter's Songs, by MERCURY REV, Agaetis Byrjun, by SIGUR RÓS, The Soft Bulletim, by FLAMING LIPS, and After Everything Now This, by THE CHURCH - It was just here, at Rave Recordings, that I came to know this great stuff, and it opened my mind once and for all to the wonderful world of Indie & Alt Rock.

- Khmer, by NILLS PETTER MOLVAER - I became a huge fan of Electro Jazz after listening to this wonderful album.

- Seven Veils, by ROBERT RICH - My introduction to Ambient Music, a genre I also love nowadays.

Yes Fragile and Jethro tull Thick as a brick, both of them came to me almost at the same time courtesy of my older brother at around 13 years I will spent hours listening to them.
and of course will set my prferences for prog until this day.

It was Dark Side of the Moon that awakened my rock and roll appreciation. My folks were pretty conservative listeners when I was a pup, and had a stack of LP's and 8-Tracks lying around that was pretty much what I listened to until DSOM was given the ear. I snapped up nearly everything I could find of Pink Floyd's, and spent many hours with Wish You Were Here, Animals, Meddle and Obscured by Clouds playiing on an old console phonograph late into the night. I was excited by some of the obscure sounds of the English groups, and 10cc's How Dare You? was a favorite as well as ELO's Eldorado. I enjoyed soundtracks a great deal, and spent hours with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien. Later, when I moved out of the house and joined the Navy, my ears really opened up. Dire Straits' Love Over Gold was a big favorite as well as ELP's Brain Salad Surgery and the Doors' Strange Days. Tangerine Dream was facinating, with their soundtrack to Thief as well as Tangram, Stratosfear and Rubicon. Klaus Schultze's Trancefer was amazing as was Laurie Anderson's Big Science and Isao Tomita's Snowflakes are Dancing and Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Ommadawn and Jean Luc Ponty's Enigmatic Ocean.....

You really shouldn't ask me these things. I just won't stop.

"The great tragedy of science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."--T. Huxley

I have most of the albums discussed in this thread and quite like them. None, however, created an epiphany - I just liked them, and still do. That which opened my eyes though was a 16 disc compilation of classical music released in the 60's by Reader's Digest. My father bought the collection, and it was my first experience into the extensive world of classical music. Famous melodies, like the Reingold beer song, appeared in its original state as the "Estudiantina Waltz," and Alfred HItchcock's TV show's theme song as "The Funeral March of a Marionette." For the first time, I heard the 1812 Overture, The Carmen Suite, March Slave, and a host of other staples. I soon realized that classical music wasn't just syrupy violins, but a vast array of musical expressions that have lasted for centuries. I was only 15 or 16 at the time, and it was most definitely "UN-cool" to listen to such stuff, but I still loved it.

I would not say any one album resulted in any type of epiphany. My older brother who is an absolute music freak was always blaring many of the albums already mentioned so it was like living next to record store most of my life.

Two albums that actually got me starting to go out and buy my own LP's were

Running on Empty - Jackson Browne
And Then There Were Three- Genesis

Not hugely popular LP's with fans or the critics but they had something about them that I liked and that got me to go out and buy more music.

On a related note my 16-year old son, who up until about 6 months ago pretty much ignored music, has suddenly got into it like crazy. It seemed to start with Bob Dylan and it just keeps growing and is pretty neat to watch. Almost every day he has "discovered" something new and now I am hearing Sinatra,Dylan, Hendrix and techno music among others coming out of his room on any given day.

I wish I caould go back and edit mine.

Not sure how I missed XTC's Skylarking. It's still my favorite from them and certainly in my 100 Essential list, not that I ever completed it. Ditto for Goodbye Jumbo from World Party. Prolly should have the Feelies 'Only Life' in there too. VU with Nico...man, I need to ponder this for a few more days (sigh). My CRS disease is really making things difficult for me.

I call my bathroom Jim instead of John so I can tell people that I go to the Jim first thing every morning.

If you say the word 'gullible' very slowly it sounds just like oranges.

My first musical epiphany was Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here: I was 13 when this came out and while I was all over DSOTM for about a year, It was Wish You Were Here that eneded up being the knock-out blow. I remember riding my bike over to my friend's house the day I bought it to listen and was absolutely floored. That album shaped my listening throughout high school.

But as highschool was coming to an end, the summer before my graduating year I finally got the chance to see my heroes in concert and it was my first concert disappointment. And a huge disappointment it was. I was ready for something new, something diffrent, I didn't fully acknowledge it at the time - I was still all about Floyd my senior year, but suddenly albums like Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bullocks, and The Ramones were making itheir way nto my bedroom for a listen, alongside Supertramp and ELP.

When I graduated and moved to a new city, I was feeling alone and alienated and found comfort in this record store that was pretty cool, carried british imports, played interesting albums that I hadn't heard. I guess it was an indie store, but I didn't know it at the time. So in 1979, I read a very short but gushing review of Wire's 154 in Rolling Stone, and soon picked up a copy. It was sort of Pink Floyd like, but from a Punk/new wave band. Floyd you could dance to. I listened and listened and listened and thought that this is a great sound. I soon had the other two of their first three albums and for about a year, it was really nothing but Wire. And for the next 8 or 9 years I was all about British alternative bands (The Clash, The Jam, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure, etc...) and American college bands like Violent Femmes and Camper Van Beethoven.

After finishing school I started making some real money for the first time in my life and so it was time to get a real stereo system and an audiophile was born, suddenly I was all about the Stereophile "Records to Die 4' list and their audiophile-approved album recomendations; (remember Jazz at the Pawn Shop?) Out of that somewhat mis-guided musical phase did come my next musical epiphany, which came in the form of Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus, what a great album, the first jazz album that I really liked and could listen to over and over, this led to a relatively thorough exploration of the late 50s through mid 60s jazz greats like Davis and Coltrane and Evans and Monk etc...It was a great time that resulted in more music-buying than at any time before in my life.

But there was one more epiphany to come and the seeds were sown right here at good old Rave Recordings. It was the late 90s and I was doing what I often was doing; surfing the net looking for discussion, reviews, etc on audio equipment, when I stumbled upon this board. Bands I came of age with were being discussed here and there, and I guess I was looking for something new that would get me back to the best times musically in my life and so I posted; asking for recommendations for newer music based on my listed influences. I was soon inundated by compilation cds thanks to the generosity of Rave Recers with names like dbi and Stone and Rae and Ms. Nomer and Jar and dozens others that helped show me that the alternative music that I loved never died, it just changed names to indie and shoegazzer and Brit Pop and, and, and. So my latest epiphinous album is actually a compilitaion that I receved from dbi, or maybe it was Davey by then, that we'll call American Indie Rock Sampler, with songs by artists like Luna, Built to Spill, The Glands, Eleventh Dream Day, Giant Sand, Yo La Tengo, all of which have become staples of my listening diet.

You know it's a good 8 or 9 years since my last epiphany; I think I'm due...

"I don't know. A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." The Right Honourable JC.

It was an eye opener for me in that digital recordings on LP could sound remarkably analog like. They recorded in real acoustic spaces, and were in no rush to make the recording win the Loudness War, or overly compress it.

hmmmmmm

there are probably more than this, but just off the top of my head...

Yardbirds: Live, featuring Jimmy Page, bought this as a kid and loved it...

NEU: Neu (Hallo Gallo is trance inducing even without drugs)
Can: Future Days (bought this new with my paper-route money)
AmonDuul II: Tanz der Lemmings (all three of these opened my live-long love for Kraut rock)

Tangerine Dream: Phaedra (showed me the inventive side of synthesizers)

Pink Floyd: DSOTM: (Perfectly Polished Prog)

Madness/Specials/English Beat: All of their First releases, unleashed the magic of SKA!

Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (This album scared the hell out of me for years, and is now my number one favorite of all time...)

book

My first musical epiphany was Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here: I was 13 when this came out and while I was all over DSOTM for about a year, It was Wish You Were Here that eneded up being the knock-out blow. I remember riding my bike over to my friend's house the day I bought it to listen and was absolutely floored. That album shaped my listening throughout high school.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ELT ( and all the other people on this thread that mention PINK FLOYD)........

Go find a copy of the book A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS..........a great read for any PF fan...........superlative review of the early years up to the Gilmore dominance..........the complete history of Syd included, which, of course is the topic in WYWH.

It was an eye opener for me in that digital recordings on LP could sound remarkably analog like. They recorded in real acoustic spaces, and were in no rush to make the recording win the Loudness War, or overly compress it.

This is one well-crafted recording. These may be fighting words, but I actually think it would be impossible to archive this level of quality on analog recording equipment. So many tracks, no cruft.